


Remnants

by sciencefictioness



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Hallucinations, Horror, M/M, Mission Fic, Possession, Post-Fall of Overwatch, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:00:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27311554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencefictioness/pseuds/sciencefictioness
Summary: They play it.Then they play it again.The recording crackles with static, like the signal was barely strong enough to push through.  It’s not just the white noise of a bad connection in the background.  There’s the sound of something groaning, like metal that wants to give way to gravity.  Something else that makes Jesse think of smoke passing through ventilation.Once, just before the audio cuts off, Jesse would swear he hears laughter.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 17
Kudos: 91





	Remnants

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Danger and Dread, then the world kinda fell apart a little bit, so here it is instead. Happy Halloween!

They play it.

Then they play it again.

The recording crackles with static, like the signal was barely strong enough to push through. It’s not just the white noise of a bad connection in the background. There’s the sound of something groaning, like metal that wants to give way to gravity. Something else that makes Jesse think of smoke passing through ventilation. 

Once, just before the audio cuts off, Jesse would swear he hears laughter.

Everyone is gathered in Winston’s lab at the Watchpoint. They don’t have a lot of people yet, but they’ve proved more than once that numbers aren’t everything in a fight. Hana and Mei stand behind Winston at his bank of computers. Lúcio sits perched on a nearby desk. Hanzo hovers just inside the doorway; he’s not looking at the monitors like everyone else.

He’s looking at Jesse. It’s not the first time it’s happened. Hanzo’s eyes find him more often than they should; sometimes Jesse likes it.

Right now isn’t one of those times.

Jesse hears the voice of a dead man pouring through the speakers and has to sit down as his knees threaten to give out underneath him. When the recording ends the second time he lifts his hand, swirls his index finger in a circle in the air without looking up.

“One more time, if you would.” He doesn’t want to listen again.

Jesse will be hearing it in his sleep as it is, but he doesn’t have a choice. This isn’t some Null Sector activity, or a Talon incursion, or Vishkar overstepping their bounds yet again.

This is something else. Something that hits too close to home and digs its claws in deep.

Something that throws Jesse back through the years until he’s nothing but a stupid teenager again, gun too big for his hands, looking across an interrogation room at a man who saved the whole damn world.

Winston hesitates for a moment before hitting play.

_ “If anyone is out there, this is… this is Jack Morrison. I’m at Watchpoint Belukha, I’m… god, I shouldn’t have come here, this was a mistake. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone here. If you’re listening to this, don’t—  _

There’s a loud burst of feedback, everything garbled and distorted. Jesse’s right eye aches with it every time— he squints, like it’s going to help him clear away the noise. Like it will help him hear better, somehow. His head throbs, and he winces.

Jack’s voice picks up again, shifting into something desperate.

_ —don’t leave me like this. I don’t want to die here. Please. _

It cuts off abruptly, and Jesse fists his hand on the table in front of him, eye still scrunched up in distaste. 

“Somethin’ ain’t right,” he says, as though that tells anyone anything.

As though a ghost wasn’t reaching out from some frozen wasteland across the world and pleading for their help. Jack Morrison was buried under rubble in Switzerland, crushed so thoroughly no one could even find his bones.

Jesse did his best to bury his memories, too. Shove them so deep they couldn’t find the surface, keep them locked up tight where they couldn’t see the sun.

“I don’t like it either,” Hanzo says, frowning. He's got a palm laid flat over his dragon tattoos.

He's still watching Jesse. The others are debating the logistics of a mission— they’re already spread thin, and Siberia isn’t the most forgiving of places. They could roll out with a skeleton crew but nobody seems too keen on the idea, especially with the lack of intel.

Jesse sucks air through his teeth, adjusting his hat so it sits lower over his eyes.

“Y’all figure out what you wanna do, but I’m goin’ at first light. Anybody wants to join me, they’re welcome to it.” Jesse gets to his feet and heads towards the door, Hanzo moving out of the way to let him pass.

“McCree, we don’t have—”

“No,” Jesse says, turning back around to face. “We don’t got a lotta things. I ain’t never been part of Overwatch, but back in Blackwatch? We didn’t leave nobody behind, and I sure ain’t starting now.”

Nobody tries to stop him as he leaves, walking towards the barracks like there’s someone at his heels. Jesse’s quarters are among the first set of doors he comes to— some of the returning Overwatch agents have reclaimed old rooms but Jesse was never stationed at Gibraltar and they were all the same to him. Living as a wanted man had been rough, but it made Jesse grateful for the little things. Hot water and fresh food and a bed to come back to at the end of the day.

Being able to sleep without wondering if he would have to wake up running.

The door to his room whirs shut behind him and he takes a few moments to catch his breath and steady himself. He won’t have long.

The knock is quiet; soft but insistent just like he expects. Jesse sits down on his bed with a sigh.

“Come in,” he says, resigned.

Athena opens the door at that and Hanzo is there, slipping inside. Jesse sets his hat on the nightstand and runs his fingers through his hair. They aren’t shaking, but only because he won’t let them.

All of him is shaking, inside.

“I wanted to check on you,” Hanzo says. He doesn’t ask any specific questions, nor does he try to get in Jesse’s space. Jesse would laugh if he didn’t feel so desolate.

Hanzo is always too close. Hanzo is always too far. 

Hanzo lives in the middle distance. Most days, Jesse wants to pull him in and pin him down and kiss him.

Today is more complicated. 

Today, Jesse is haunted.

“Tired of all these fucking ghosts showing up when I done buried them once already,” Jesse says, suddenly so exhausted that it’s hard to keep his eyes open. 

There’s Reaper showing up all over the place, moving like Gabriel Reyes and talking in his voice and refusing to fade into the background. There’s Ana appearing out of nowhere— Jesse never sees her, but he sees her bullets putting holes in his enemies, impossible shots that no one else could make. Still watching his back after all this time.

He’d left her sleeping in a hospital bed, memories hazy and head full of static. 

Jesse didn’t know if it was better or worse that she got it all back.

Now Jack Morrison was calling from across the world, stuck in some run-down Watchpoint in a frozen wasteland, begging like Jesse has never heard. He’s had nothing and no one for so long that it’s strange to have something to rely on, Overwatch coming together around him in fits and starts.

Hanzo standing there, bending over backwards to make up for the things he’s done even if he won’t say it out loud.

“I know what that is like,” Hanzo says, something sorrowful in his voice. “At least you did not put them in the ground in the first place.”

It really isn’t funny, but Jesse huffs a laugh all the same.

“Feels like it most days.”

The silence between them drags on for too long but Jesse is used to weathering it. Hanzo often takes his time finding the right words, or deciding what he will do. Jesse supposes that comes with the territory. 

One thoughtless moment was enough to take everything from him. Now, Hanzo has learned to wait.

“I’m going with you,” Hanzo says, and there is no room for argument in his tone. Made of steel. Unwilling to bend. Jesse shoots him a smile that’s weak but genuine.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, darlin’.”

Hanzo flusters just like he expects. It never gets old, no matter how often Jesse sees it. He gives a nod that’s oddly grave when held against the pink in his cheeks and strides from the room in a rush.

Sleep comes easier than he expects, but Jesse still wakes up with his gun in his hand and his heart beating wild in his chest.

-

The transports are always mostly empty, nowadays. It isn’t strange for him in the same way it might be for Lena or Reinhardt or Angela. 

Jesse is used to skeleton crews. It’s how Deadlock operated, and how Blackwatch operated, and he isn’t sure he’d ever adapt to anything else at this point. 

He isn’t as surprised as he should be when they make their way inside and find Ana waiting. She’s sitting primly in one of the seats, legs crossed with her rifle across her lap. The eyepatch throws him all over again, just like it did when he first sat at her bedside. He probably won’t ever get used to it.

It might be easier if he spent time with her more than once or twice every few years, but he doesn’t see that happening, either.

“Commander Amari,” he says. It’s knee-jerk but he doesn’t flinch afterwards. Ana just smiles.

“Jesse,” she replies, watching as the rest of the team climbs on board behind him— Hana’s mech is already loaded but she goes to check the tie-downs anyway. Mei and Lúcio look at Ana warily but take their seats in the cockpit without a word. Lúcio isn’t the best pilot, but he’s the one they’ve got with Lena out on a mission. “Intercepted Jack’s distress signal. I haven’t heard from him in… too long. I was worried something had happened, but I didn’t expect this.”

Jesse tries not to let it show on his face just how irritated that makes him— of course she knew Jack was still alive.

Of course she didn’t say a goddamn word about it.

Hanzo hovers at his elbow, as though waiting for instruction. He knows who Ana is, in spite of never meeting her in person; too much whiskey, too many hours alone together, and not enough good sense on Jesse’s part have seen to that.

“Tagging along, I take it? Figured if you were going, you’d be going alone.”

Jesse doesn’t know how Ana gets her intel, but he knows she gets it faster than they do, acts on it faster. 

“I can get there quicker with you than on my own. And I mean… it’s  _ Jack,”  _ she says, shrugging one shoulder, nonplussed; as though they are old friends taking a road trip together.

As though she hasn’t laid her burdens at Jesse’s feet.  _ Don’t tell Fareeha. Don’t tell anyone. It isn’t safe. _

_ Please, Jesse. _

One more person expecting him to pick up their pieces and keep going. 

Jesse loves Ana, but he doesn’t have to love this. Ana looks more put together on the outside than she is on the inside. He doesn’t need her to tell him.

She’s not waiting for affirmation, or permission, and Jesse doesn’t blame her. It’s not as if anyone here can tell her no.

“Hope you got them biotic rounds stocked up. Angela’s in the field with Genji right now, and we’re short a medic.”

“Not anymore, you’re not,” she says, and Jesse gives her a nod as he takes his seat at the far end of the transport. He’s too tired for small talk, and even if he wasn’t there are too many people around for either of them to say the things they really need to say.

Hanzo sits down next to him, blessedly quiet, running an absent palm up and down his tattoos. The silence is comfortable and Jesse lets himself soak it in; they’ll have to go over their game plan again before they reach their destination. Strap into winter gear, get their comms online, double check their ammo and biotics and armor. There’s time for all that, later.

Right now he presses his thigh against Hanzo’s, and Hanzo presses back as Lúcio takes them up into the air.

It’s the last moment of peace Jesse gets for a long time.

-

They fly through a brutal snowstorm that has their navigation and comms screwed well before they get to Watchpoint Belukha. It’s nothing that should endanger their transport, but things feel touch and go for a while. Everyone shares sidelong glances as they shudder through the air, Lúcio and Mei both waving away their concern. 

When they pass through the worst of the storm it feels more like slipping into the eye of a hurricane than slipping out of danger. Jesse doesn’t say it out loud, but he doesn’t need to; everyone can feel it.

Hanzo can feel it, at least. 

They can’t see the facility through lingering snow as they descend, but it shows up on infrared just fine, little spots of heat in a wasteland of cold. It’s nestled in the forest, a heavy line of trees circling it at about a hundred yards. They land just on the other side of the thicket just in case. Anyone at the Watchpoint would have probably heard them a long ways off, but there’s no need to give them a line of sight as they approach. Jack hadn’t mentioned any hostiles, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there; the recording had cut off fairly abruptly, and Jack wasn’t begging for extraction for no reason at all after years on his own. Not with SEP in his blood making him damn near immortal and all the incentive in the world to stay under the radar.

Someone, or something, was after him.

Everyone was bundled up against the vicious Siberian cold, doing last minute weapons checks as Lúcio got the orca into hibernation mode— lights dimmed, power low. If they need to get out in a hurry they can, but they won’t be draining their fuel cells down to nothing in the meantime. 

“Everybody green?” Jesse asks. 

They nod out their affirmatives, Lúcio giving him two thumbs up and insisting he’s  _ super green.  _ Ana is quiet, mask already pulled down over her face. Hana is in her mech, metal arm raised in agreement as she taps away at her console. Mei is used to operating in winter climates; she’s the most at home here, with snow and ice so thick that all they can see is white. 

Hanzo has his weapon drawn already, the only one to do so; he’s been more and more unsettled the closer they got to the Watchpoint, and Jesse doesn’t blame him. His skin is crawling.

His right eye aches. 

“Alright, eyes up and alert, let’s move in slow.”

The cold is so sharp Jesse winces as the bay door opens to let them all out. They move together, Hana and Lúcio taking the lead while Hanzo and Ana hold the back line. Mei stays by Jesse’s side as they slip through the trees towards the facility, everyone whisper-quiet except Hana, who’s reporting through their comms on all the nothing she’s seeing on her scanners.

“There’s heating and survival systems up and running but I don’t see any human heat signatures, hostile or otherwise. Lights are on but nobody’s home.”

Nobody mentions that the lights shouldn’t be on. That power should have been cut ages ago, and any generators would have fallen into disrepair after so many years in the cold without maintenance. Maybe Jack was there, but he was no technician. He’d been through the crisis, sure, but he’d slogged through it with a gun in his hand and no time for anything but bullets in steel.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Jesse says, throwing a look over his shoulder as the forest gets thicker around him. The transport is barely visible, a flash of white and a few blinking lights behind them.

When the forest swallows it entirely, Jesse’s vision goes hazy for a moment, stomach lurching with something like dread.

He turns back around and pushes through, all of them easing out of the treeline to get their first real look at the Watchpoint.

“Damn,” Hana says, Lúcio humming in a disapproving way and shaking his head.

“Don’t like this one bit,” he says. Jesse has to agree.

The Watchpoint is lit up like a Christmas tree, lights flashing everywhere in eerie silence. It’s as though someone has sounded the emergency alarms except without the deafening sirens that go along with them. Doors hang open here and there letting snow drift inside, and there are icicles dripping from the doorways overhead. A metal chain has broken off of some machinery and it swings slowly in the wind, metal creaking against metal.

There are several small, broken down transports buried in the snow, windows busted, interiors dusted white. Their anti-grav units gave up years ago, frames buckling under their own weight. An empty bird’s nest sits on the dashboard of one of them, dry branches and old feathers but no signs of life.

Just like the rest of the Watchpoint, it seems. The only signs of life are long past being of any comfort.

There are bodies scattered on the ground outside the main entrance to what should be the control room, if the blueprints they have are accurate. They can’t have been there long, not considering the depth of the snow around them, but the relative freshness is the least uncomfortable thing about them. 

There are a dozen at least, all of them in the telltale red and white armor of Talon’s foot soldiers.

In the places their armor has fallen away there is no skin, no blood. There are nothing but blackened husks where flesh and bone should be, little pieces of it flaking away in the wind. Jesse reaches up to grab a serape he isn’t wearing and pull it over his face, only to stop halfway through the motion. 

“Hana?” Jesse asks, and she comes out of her daze all at once.

“I’m picking up nothing. No radiation to speak of, no biological agents, no chemicals, nada. Whatever did this either wasn’t airborne, or it’s gone now.”

Jesse nods grimly, giving the bodies a quick double check to make sure they’re all really dead. He isn’t about to touch them, but a nudge with his boot has them disintegrating even further. They’re not just dead.

They’re nothing at all.

“On me,” Jesse says, heading up to the open door to the control room and standing with his back to the metal next to it for a moment. He meets Hanzo’s eyes. Holds them for a handful of seconds. Hanzo gives him a stern nod, and he steadies his weapon and slips through the doorway.

The snow is piled up near the entrance, but tapers off as he moves deeper into the room. It blows in gusts as Jesse’s feet move from loose powder to dirty steel. The cold is still vicious, even inside. Everything is coated in a thick layer of dust, like no one has been here for years. Some of the monitors are broken, but not all of them. The systems seem mostly intact, though Lúcio will know better than Jesse how bad off they truly are once he gets a good look at them. 

There’s a large bank of computers running along the left side of the room, holo-screens cracked and displaying a shuddering, unnatural video— it’s Jack’s distress call, but without any sound. He’s standing in front of the monitors in the video, the image so distorted Jesse can barely make him out. 

His right eye flares with pain, and for a moment, it isn’t Jack’s twisted image on the holo. It strobes, and everything is violet-black, showing Reaper’s visage instead. Bone white mask, the faintest hint of red in the empty eye sockets. 

Something draws his gaze off to the left, where the stairs lead down into the sublevels. There’s blood smeared on the wall, old and rusty. Jesse rubs at his eye with the heel of his hand.

When he turns back to the screen it’s Jack again and the blood on the wall is gone. Everyone else is taking in the room with studious eyes, but no one seems to have noticed anything.

Hanzo is frowning, laying a hand over his bicep, fingers digging into the thick fabric of his coat.

Everything feels wrong. Jesse can’t put his finger on it, but it’s something he’s felt before— right before Blackwatch raided Deadlock. Right before the Swiss base explosion. 

Right before things went to shit in ways that left his life changed forever, and for the worse.

“I’m gonna head back to the transport and radio Winston. You guys make sure we’re clear on this floor and sit tight.”

Backup might be slow in coming, but they’re gonna need it. Jesse can feel it in his bones. He heads back outside and makes his way towards the thicket of trees they came in through, snow crunching under his feet. When he starts moving through the trees he’s hit with a wave of dizziness. The thicket seems to stretch on for far longer than it should, and every time he thinks the orca will appear up ahead, there is only more forest.

When it clears finally, he isn’t looking at the transport.

He’s looking at the facility again, from the opposite side of the treeline. Jesse blinks, looking over his shoulder at the tangle of trees, which seem packed more tightly together than before. He turns and walks through them again, this time having to fight his way through clinging vines and low hanging branches. When he makes it through finally, it’s just what he expects.

The facility again, viewed from where he’d started. The woods are so dense behind him now, he doubts he could get through at all again. The dread that’s been pooling in his stomach swells, and settles again.

If they want to leave, they’ll have to find another way.

He crosses back to the facility again, slipping into the control room to find Hana frowning at whatever computer screens are still intact, her mech sitting empty in the corner. Hanzo is looking at him strangely, but there’s no point in telling the rest of them exactly what happened just yet. They can deal with it later, after they find out what’s really going on here. Everyone gives him a questioning look.

“This place ain’t right,” Jesse says evasively, wiping a hand over his mouth and beard. “We need to be careful. Whatcha got Hana?”

She makes a noise of annoyance.

“This tech is so old it could drink in most countries, but it’s still managing alright. No uplink of course, not sure how anyone would’ve gotten a message out to us in the first place, but whatever emergency protocols Jack, or whoever, managed to set off got most of the doors unlocked. I don’t know if it’s accurate, something glitching in the system because of exposure to the elements, or just that it’s old, but the logs are telling me the alarm was set off weeks ago, and not when we got the message in the first place. Says survival systems have been online since then, which is why everything here isn’t frozen solid.”

Jesse nods. Mei is tapping away at what looks like the climate control programs. Ana looks restless in the corner, like she’d rather be off searching already, but she hasn’t disappeared yet. Lúcio hovers behind Hana, reading over her shoulder.

“Surveillance is only partly online— we got cameras down all over the place, and a couple of busted displays, but from what I can see here and Hana’s thermal readings, this place is empty. There’s nobody here, Jack or otherwise, unless they’re doing a damn good job of hiding.”

They glance through the surveillance systems for a while, looking over the facility’s blueprints on their tablets going over the plan again— Ana is with Hana, Lúcio with Mei, Jesse with Hanzo. They’ll split up and search the place in teams, leaving Lúcio and Mei in the control room in case the others need backup in a hurry. Ana and Hana will clear the above-ground levels and secure the perimeter, while Jesse and Hanzo search underground.

They’re getting ready to go their separate ways when Hanzo speaks up again, nodding at the holoscreen that’s still showing a stuttering image of Jack.

“Anyone else notice that the video is… wrong?” Jesse freezes, wondering if Hanzo saw what he had seen— Reaper in the video, reaching out towards Jesse. Everyone glances at Hanzo before turning to look at the video, still stuttering and barely visible. “He’s not… here. He’s not wearing his mask, and it looks like he’s… buried under something. Rocks, maybe. Rubble.”

Jesse squints at the image and Hanzo… 

“Hanzo is right. He’s definitely not in this room, anyway. Also the file isn’t playing from this system’s storage. It’s a transmission from somewhere else in the facility,” Mei says, scrolling through corrupted files on an almost indecipherable holoscreen. “It’s coming from the sub-basement.”

Jesse’s tablet buzzes along with everyone else’s; Mei has put a marker on the map where the signal appears to be originating. Three floors down, in something that looks like a storage room, or an armory, maybe. Servers, or some kinda lab, Jesse can’t tell. 

On the holo, Jack Morrison begs silently for someone to save him.

“Alright everyone, weapons check, gear check, comm check, let’s go!” Jesse watches as everyone inspects their weapons, their ammunition, patting at pockets and pouches in their clothes. Hana hops in her mech again, light flickering as she runs a system check. Lúcio adjusts something on his kit, and Ana pulls her mask on again. His comm beeps in his ear as he syncs up his channel with Hanzo and Mei. Ana and Hana will have a direct line to Lúcio. 

They sound off that they’re ready to go one by one; Hanzo is last, holding Jesse’s gaze for a long, impossible moment before giving him a grave nod. 

“Eyes up, weapons out. I don’t trust this place. Let’s move out! Keep control updated with your movements and don’t get sloppy.”

Mei and Lúcio are scrolling through screens and menus as he and Hanzo move towards the stairs. The blood Jesse saw is gone, if it was ever there at all, but Hanzo’s gaze seems to linger on the space where it had been in his… hallucination. Vision.

Exhaustion.

“Are you ready?” Hanzo asks after a moment, and Jesse realizes he’s been staring there, too. He nods, looking down the metal stairs. A light flickers from somewhere below, throwing the landing into stuttering shadows.

“Ready to get this done and get out of here. On me,” he says, and heads down the stairs with Peacekeeper raised high.

Hanzo follows after, his presence a physical thing behind Jesse. It’s more comforting than he wants to admit. Jesse slows a little, lets Hanzo move closer.

Together, they slip into the dark.

-

They don’t even make it to the first underground level before things start to slide sideways. The stairs are metal, rusted from winter creeping in at the edges and wearing them down over the years. They creak as Jesse and Hanzo descend them. Most Watchpoints had similar construction styles— the layout would be a little different, but architecturally, everything was always pretty much the same. Jesse expects to go down two flights of stairs before getting to the initial basement level.

They’re on the sixth or seventh flight, so far down they can’t see the top anymore, when Jesse looks over his shoulder to meet Hanzo’s eyes. Hanzo shakes his head but neither of them stop.

Jesse has lost count of how many flights of stairs they’ve descended when they finally get to the upper basement level. After fifteen or so, they all blurred together, groaning metal and light that faded in and out. One long hallway stretches away from the stairwell, while the stairs themselves keep going, disappearing down into the dark. There are LEDs flickering in the hall along the floors, while open doors spill sickly yellow light from the rooms. 

This floor is not where the signal is originating from, and Jesse doesn’t want to linger, but it shouldn’t take too long to clear. Just because Morrison sent the message from down there doesn’t mean he hasn’t moved around since then. He taps at his comm.

“Long way down to the first basement level. Gonna clear it real quick, then keep heading down.”

Mei’s voice comes back immediately, laced with a faint trace of static.

“Copy that, keep us posted.”

They creep into the hallway together, and Jesse frowns. The blueprints show the first basement level as something that looks like a warehouse— one big open space with a few smaller rooms branching off that he assumed were closets and storage and bathrooms. It’s nothing like what he’s seeing now, the long corridor ahead of them making Jesse think of some of the more claustrophobic transport ships he’s been on than anything else. Jesse hates being in tight spaces. Hates being underground.

The desert wasn't good for much, but he could always count on those vast open skies above him to let him breathe easier. 

“Guess we can’t rely on them prints to help us out much,” he says, and Hanzo makes a noise low in his throat.

“It would seem not.” 

Jesse runs the back of his hand over his mouth and nods tightly.

“All right. Let’s clear it out and keep going down.”

It should be a simple thing to clear a few rooms— even if the blueprints are inaccurate, the facility is only pulling a small amount of power. With all the heat and lights on, considering how many amps the place is generating, there can’t be too much buried down there. 

They creep past empty meeting rooms, all of them the same, rolling chairs scattered around long tables. Half of them are knocked onto their sides, and there are papers strewn everywhere. Some of the holo projectors are still on, lighting up blank white walls with stuttering images of… Jesse doesn’t know. Sometimes it looks like Jack. Sometimes it looks like Reaper.

Sometimes it looks like Jesse, except his eyes are black and there is smoke pouring from his mouth. If Hanzo notices, he doesn’t say a word. The sheets of paper are all blank. 

There is no reason for a facility this size to have this many meeting rooms. Jesse has the odd feeling that he’s walking around a movie set, or some half-hearted rendering in a video game. The meeting rooms are identical, and it tugs at the edges of his memories. Jesse thinks of Switzerland. Thinks of HQ.

Jesse doesn’t think at all, and they twist down hallways that drag on further than should be possible, dozens and dozens of this same room echoed over and over again. Sometimes his eye aches, and there are splashes of blood on the floor.

He rubs at it, and the blood vanishes. Hanzo palms at his own bicep. Neither one of them says a word for a long time. When they turn another corner and are faced with a hallway that seems endless, Jesse shakes his head. Jack isn’t here, and if he is, they’re never going to find him like this. The wrongness of everything has settled into his jaw, making his teeth ache.

“Fuck this shit. Let’s head down and keep moving.”

When they turn around to make their way through the serpentine hallways back to the stairwell, both of them freeze. 

The stairs are right behind them, like they haven’t gone anywhere at all. As though they stepped out of the stairwell and didn’t move an inch. As though they haven’t been walking for so long his legs are starting to ache. Hanzo looks almost angry, eyes narrowed as he glances around.

“Goddamnit,” Jesse says, pawing at his eye again, trying to breathe through the pain in his head. 

“Are you alright?” Hanzo asks, laying a tentative hand on Jesse’s shoulder. Jesse leans into him and shakes his head.

“Nah, I don’t think I am. This place sure the fuck ain’t. Didn’t come all this way for nothing, though. Let’s head down.”

His eyes are closed, but he feels Hanzo’s fingers on his cheek; just for a moment, there and then gone again.

“All right. Let’s go, then.”

They head down again.

Down, and down, and down. It’s ten flights, then twenty, then dread is rising in Jesse again and it’s hard to breathe. His ears start ringing, and there’s static buzzing in his ears, the air pressure strange and disorienting. It gets worse as they descend further. Jesse lifts a hand to rub at his right eye and his fingers come back wet with blood.

Hanzo stops all of a sudden, laying a palm flat against the wall with his teeth gritted, Stormbow clattering to the floor. He’s grabbing at his tattoo— grabbing at his dragons. He’s doubled over and breathing hard and Jesse can’t stop himself from touching his face.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” 

There’s something that looks like black smoke drifting through the air around him. Hanzo’s eyes go wide, lit up eerie blue like they are when he summons his dragons. The lights around them flicker wildly.

“NO!” Hanzo says, and the smoke vanishes along with the ringing in Jesse’s ears and the pressure suffocating them both. “No,” Hanzo says again, more softly this time, blinking slowly at Jesse as the blue in his eyes flickers just like the lights had. “I’m… I’m fine, it’s—”

Jesse cuts him off, hand still lingering on his cheek.

“Darlin’, ain’t none of this  _ fine.  _ We’re so far from fine it ain’t even funny. Talk to me.” 

Hanzo holds his gaze for a long moment, then sighs.

“My… my dragons don’t like this place. They’ve been restless, and noisy, and just now it— it felt like they were trying to leave my body entirely. Not like when I summon them but like… something was trying to push them out.”

Jesse frowns. Doesn’t know what to say, or how to process that in any way that’s useful. Everything is wrong here. 

Jesse doesn’t blame Hanzo’s dragons for wanting out of it.

“Are you going to tell me what’s been happening with your eye? You’ve been rubbing it the whole time we’ve been here and now it’s bleeding.”

He doesn’t know when he dropped his hand from Hanzo’s face, but he lifts it now, fingertips probing gently under his right eye where it feels swollen.

“I got a black eye yet?” It happens sometimes when he pushes his deadeye too hard. Hanzo shakes his head. “I dunno, it’s been playing tricks on me. Or this place has, but it’s fucking with my vision. I’m seeing things I ain’t sure are really there. Nothing big, just… the video of Morrison got weird on me. Keep seeing blood where there isn’t any.” Jesse laughs and closes his eyes. “I just couldn’t leave it alone. Another fuckin’ dead man coming to drag me into his shit, and I let him. God, we shoulda never come here.”

Hanzo squeezes his shoulder before picking up his bow again.

“Well, we are here, now. Let’s see if we can find your ghost.”

They go down.

Down, and down, and down. The stairs degrade more and more the lower they descend, metal creaking under their weight, some of them broken or missing. The lights are out completely in some places, leaving the two of them moving in darkness, hearts racing as they clatter down towards the next pool of light.

When they finally reach the sub basement, they’re both out of breath. The stairs keep going down, even though they shouldn’t. There’s not supposed to be anything else down there. 

The second sub-level is marked as labs and storage, but what lies in front of Hanzo and Jesse is another control room, a mirror of the one upstairs. The layout is the same, right down to which holos are cracked, which monitors are broken, and where there is blood stuttering in and out of existence on the wall.

  
The only difference is the message playing over the holo isn’t from Jack.

It’s Gabriel on the screen, the audio filling the room. Gabriel looks to be buried under the same kind of rubble as Jack was in the video upstairs, except the blood coming from his nose and mouth and eyes looks black, and his voice is layered eerily over itself.

_ “Jesse,”  _ Gabriel says, looking out on the screen as though he can see him standing there.  _ “Jesse, please. You have to help me. Don’t leave me here like this, not after everything. I don’t want to die alone. Jesse, please.” _

The video stutters to blackness then begins again, Gabriel’s voice hitting him directly in the gut. It isn’t that it sounds wrong. 

It’s that Gabriel wouldn’t beg like that, not even dying alone at the top of the world. The moment the thought crosses his mind, dark laughter echoes through the halls.

Jesse’s comm crackles to life in his ear. Mei’s voice is barely audible through static and squealing.

“Something isn’t right. ...sse, Hanzo, you need t… back, we can’t reach Hana and Ana has go… something here with us, get back here bef…”

“Mei?” Hanzo says, fingers pressing at his comm. “Mei, what’s happening?”

“...dead! I think they’re b… have to get out!”

Their comms screech loudly in their ears. Louder, and louder, until they’re both reaching up to jerk them out, blood dripping from their burst eardrums. The comms are smoking, fried and useless in their palms.

“We need to get back upstairs,” Hanzo says. It’s laced with uncertainty— they both know just how long it took them to get down here. How long it will take them to head up again.

How every second they hesitate could be life or death.

Something flashes across the room— a figure moving fast through the opposite hall, a blur of blue and white and red. Running with a limp, dragging one leg behind themselves at an odd angle.

“Jack!” Jesse calls, but there is no answer. He wonders for a moment if it was his eyes playing tricks on him again, except Hanzo is looking at the hallway too, grim resignation on his face. 

“The others need help,” Hanzo says. He, Mei, and Hana have always been close. 

Jesse knows he’s right; he looks towards the hallway where Jack disappeared, then back at Hanzo, mouth a tight line. His past is surging up under his feet, ready to swallow him whole. He dragged his team across the world to an abandoned wasteland outpost in the Siberian tundra, but if he can’t help Jack, it was all for nothing. 

Going alone would have been simpler. His own life weighed against the promise of helping someone he cared about was an easy choice. Hanzo, Mei, Lúcio, and Hana added to that equation made things infinitely more complicated. And Ana, well… Ana could get in over her head all by herself without Jesse’s help.

If they lose anyone, Jesse won’t forgive himself.

“I’m going back up. If you can’t find him fast, then either get your ass back upstairs, or get back here and sit tight. All right? Don’t… don’t let this place get to you. You still have your tablet, yes?” It’s strapped to his thigh, the team’s backup line of communication. Jesse pats it, and nods. “Don’t do anything stupid, Jesse.”

Jesse grins weakly, right eye squinted, blood still trickling from the corner.

“Afraid that’s all I’m good at, darlin’.”

Hanzo glares at Jesse with something between anger and annoyance, jaw flexing visibly.

Then he grabs Jesse by the collar of his jacket, pulls him in, and kisses him. 

It’s rough, and hungry. Messier than Jesse would have expected. Hanzo licks into his mouth and groans and kisses Jesse like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. Jesse has wanted this for longer than he is willing to admit, but he’s been taking things slow, thinking he had time. 

Maybe Hanzo thought the same thing.

Maybe he doesn’t think that anymore.

When he pulls back, mouth wet and breathing hard, Jesse feels dazed. He blinks slowly at him, smiling and pleased.

“Wish you’d done that a little bit sooner. Preferably somewhere with a bed. Gonna be a shame if we don’t make it outta here and all I got was one little kiss.”

Hanzo reaches up and lays a palm on Jesse’s cheek, running a thumb over his bottom lip.

“You’ll just have to be careful, then, I suppose. Not do anything reckless that might get you killed.”

Jesse’s smiles slides wider, even as his eye aches and his heart twists in his chest.

“Suppose so.”

Hanzo nods, and then he’s gone, back up the endless stairs towards their friends. Jesse turns around; the control room is there, still out of place and impossible. Gabriel’s voice rings through the room, words he’s never spoken. Words he’ll never speak.

_ Please, Jesse. _

Gabriel Reyes isn’t the begging sort.

He’s here, somehow. Jesse can feel it. If Jack is, too, then he still needs Jesse’s help. 

Jesse crosses the room with Peacekeeper raised high and eases into the hallway. There’s a trail of blood where Jack had been dragging his injured leg behind him.

When Jesse closes his left eye, it isn’t there. His head hurts. His right eye bleeds freely down his face. 

Jesse sniffs, and swallows, and pushes forward.

-

Hanzo climbs. Up, and up, and up. It feels like it takes even longer than the descent. 

When he passes the first basement level, it’s different than before; there is no longer a hallway. It opens into an empty room, still claustrophobic with low ceilings and flickering lights, but much larger than any of the others he’s seen. There is an altar with an empty katana stand, so out of place that Hanzo’s heart stops for a moment. There is a figure laying on the floor. 

He steps into the space on autopilot. There is blood everywhere, and Hanzo can’t breathe. The figure on the floor twitches. When they inhale, it’s labored and wet.

_ “Anija, please.” _

It’s Genji’s voice, but it isn’t Genji. Hanzo looks down to see his bow gone from his hands; in its place is a weapon he hasn’t wielded in years. A blade he left behind in Hanamura, now clenched tightly in his palms, the tip splashed with blood. Hanzo throws it down and stumbles backwards, breathing ragged and hands shaking.

It’s his bow again, when it hits the ground. The specter of his brother is gone but the blood remains. Hanzo rubs at his tattoos through his clothes, feels his dragons shift and surge. He lets his eyes flare and pulls them closer to the surface as though getting ready to summon them. There is no blood, no altar. The space is different than before— a hallway, but not sprawling as it had been earlier, stretching on infinitely.

Hanzo lets them settle and picks up his bow. The space warps back into the room with the altar. He’s holding a katana, again. It’s bloodier than before. He closes his eyes and tries to steady himself, counting out breaths and willing himself to calm down.

His tablet comes to life in that moment, buzzing with a message from someone. Hanzo’s eyes fly open as he paws at it, pulling it up and tapping at the screen. It isn’t Jesse— it’s Mei, her tablet sitting propped up on the control table, it seems. She’s wide eyed and covered in blood.

“He’s here! He’s here, he’s— Lúcio went to help the others but he hasn’t come back. I think he’s dead— I think they’re all dead. Hana, she…” Mei sobs, then continues. “Hanzo, we have to get out of here, I—”

The screen bursts with static and the sound of her screaming. There’s black smoke, and wet noises, Mei’s begging shifting into animal noises of pain. When the screen clears again she’s mangled, half frozen in a chunk of ice that’s streaked in bright red, throat slit and head hanging at an impossible angle. Hanzo can see Hana’s mech in the background.

Can see her hanging out of it, body limp and mouth dripping blood onto the floor. Lúcio and Ana are nowhere to be seen. Hana’s arm twitches as she pulls herself back into the mech; still alive, but not for long. Not without help.

The image flickers out again, back to his home screen. Hanzo taps at it, tries to get it to connect, but there is nothing but an icon showing he has no signal. He bares his teeth at the screen, shoving it back into his pocket and running into the stairwell and up again. He doesn’t get far.

They had descended a dozen flights of stairs from the surface on their way down, but now, sitting a single flight above the first basement level, there is nothing but a smooth steel wall. Hanzo lays his palm against it, lips curled in a snarl before slamming the metal with the side of his fist. His dragons are still just under the surface of his skin, and tries to pull them close, tries to see through whatever illusions this place is putting up.

It doesn’t feel like an illusion. It feels like a lie.

It doesn’t waver, doesn’t give. Hanzo’s nose starts to bleed, dragons almost boiling in him, fist hammering so hard against the steel that his bones ache. He yells so loud his throat feels raw, thinking of his teammates all alone— Mei dead in a chunk of ice. Hana in her mech, barely conscious. Jesse underground chasing after dead men.

Hanzo, standing here useless, banging his fist against a wall. 

The blueprints had shown another set of stairs on the opposite side of the facility. They’ve been wrong so far but Hanzo has to try. He runs back down the stairs, pausing in the entry to the first sublevel. Genji is there again, wheezing through bloody lips in pieces. Hanzo’s sword is trembling in his hands.

He runs, runs, runs. Every room is the same. Genji, broken on the floor.

Genji, dragging himself towards Hanzo on broken limbs, gore running out of a mouth without a jaw. 

_ Anija, please, don’t do this.  _

He clutches at Hanzo’s ankles as he runs past, calls after him through twisting hallways,  _ don’t leave me here, Hanzo.  _ His voice echoes through the rooms. He is in front of Hanzo. He is behind him. Genji is everywhere. Hanzo sword is pouring blood down over his knuckles.

Hanzo is alone, alone, alone.

His tablet buzzes again. It’s smeared in red when he pulls it out, Jesse’s face on the screen, his right eye nothing but a black, oozing void.

“Hanzo, I found him! Jack, he’s dead. Everybody’s dead! You have to get out of here, just go! Don’t wait for me!” 

Black smoke swirls around him. Jesse’s left eye lights up red. 

The tablet shuts off with a crackle of static, then that same black smoke starts pouring from the ports and seams. It cracks down the center, a spiderweb of broken glass, before shattering to pieces in Hanzo’s hand. The pieces fall to the ground, plastic clinging to his bloody palm. He’s breathing hard, his heart pounding wild. Hanzo thinks of Jesse dying.

Hanzo thinks of Jesse, dead.

_ No. _

It is Hanzo’s dragons. They are far away, pushing through fog to reach him. Genji isn’t here, and Jesse isn’t dead. There’s still a katana in his hand, and the tablet is broken at his feet. The line between real and hallucination is a shifting, intangible thing, but Hanzo knows one thing.

Jesse is alive, somewhere beneath him, and Hanzo needs to get to him now.

He turns around and the stairs are there, as though he hasn’t gone anywhere at all. Like he hasn’t run through countless rooms, with countless Genjis begging him please, no,  _ stop it, anija. _

_ Why would you do this? _

Maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he’s been standing there this whole time, still and panting and out of his mind. It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter.

Hanzo runs into the stairwell and heads down again.

-

Jack is there. 

Jack is gone.

Jack is always just far away enough to be turning the next corner when Jesse catches sight of him from the end of the hallway.

Jesse calls out to him but he doesn’t hear, or if he does, he doesn’t acknowledge him. He’s running through the halls after Jack without paying attention to the rooms he’s passing by at first, but when he glances into one, Jesse stops dead. 

It’s an interrogation room, a metal table in the center with a chair on either side, a metal ring for cuffs on the surface. Another for ankle shackles on the floor. There’s a two-way mirror running along one wall. It would be ubiquitous, except for the dent in the metal, and the way the rust curled over the left corner. It’s not something Jesse could forget.

Not after sitting there for hours, foul tasting coffee gone cold in front of him, dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit. Waiting for someone to come tell him how fucked he was.

Waiting for someone to come tell him he’d be spending the rest of his life in a cell, suffocating. Just thinking about it had Jesse breathing too fast, too hard. He can’t help but look at the mirror, where Gabriel had been. 

His reflection is black eyed with smoke coiling around him. Jesse in the mirror opens his jaw and lets it pour out like blood. Black between his teeth. Black coating his tongue.

Jesse raises Peacekeeper and fires, watching the glass shatter onto the ground. There is no observation room behind the shattered mirror.

There is a cell Jesse can see with his eyes closed.

A cell he still sees in his dreams. Jesse closes his left eye but the ringing in his head is deafening and everything blurs and before he knows it he’s retching into the floor with shaking hands. It hurts as he dry heaves, arm curled around his belly, Peacekeeper still in hand and pointing at the floor. Jesse can smell gunsmoke now. Can feel his heart beating in his skull.

He opens his eye again and staggers further down the hall. Jack isn’t just out of reach around the corner anymore, if he ever was at all. Jesse doesn’t get far when a ringing startles him— there’s a small holoscreen on the wall, meant for on-base communications. He furrows his brows and steps closer. As soon as his face registers on the scanner, the screen comes to life.

It’s Jack again, buried in rubble, begging. 

_ Don’t leave me like this. I don’t want to die here. Please. _

Jesse moves past it, around the corner and into the next hallway. All the rooms are the same— metal chairs, and broken mirrors, and the death of Jesse’s freedom. He keeps walking, calling out for Jack every now and then, rubbing at his eye.

Halfway down the next hallway is another holo screen, ringing as soon as it comes into view. Jesse tries not to look, but when he moves past it flickers to life anyway. Gabriel this time,  _ don’t leave me here like this, not after everything. _

_ I don’t want to die alone. It’s so cold. _

_ Jesse, please. _

Jesse punches the little unit projecting the hologram with his metal fist, smashing it into a million sparking pieces. That laughter echoes around him again, dark and familiar. He always wanted to see Gabriel again, try and fix all the places they’d both gone wrong. Not here, though.

Not like this.

The next holoscreen he passes rings, and the next, and the next, starting as soon as Jesse gets close. It’s Jack again, begging. It’s Gabriel.

It’s Ana, on the ground scrambling backwards with one hand raised up as though to protect herself,  _ no, Gabriel, don’t do this. Gabriel, Gabriel PLEASE! _

Then she screams, and the screen shatters all on its own. Jesse throws up again, stomach clenching around nothing as he spits blood and bile onto the floor.

The next one… is Hanzo, eyes bright blue and so wide it looks painful, teeth bared in fury. Then he’s swallowed up in blackness, turned into a husk like all those Talon troops outside in the snow.

“No,” Jesse says, lifting his right hand and rubbing at his eye with the back of his thumb, Peacekeeper trembling. “No.”

None of this is real. 

Jack isn’t here, alive or otherwise. Ana isn’t dead. 

Hanzo is somewhere close. Jesse can still get to him, they can get out of here together. He closes his left eye and breathes through the agony of it as he turns back around, dragging himself down the hall with his shoulder bumping into the wall every few steps. The stairs are close. Like he hasn’t gone anywhere at all.

Hanzo stumbles out of them before he can stumble inside. Jesse’s eyes are wide, wide like Hanzo’s had been in that video, so wide it hurts. He reaches out with a shaking hand, the metal just as unsteady as the rest of him, and pulls Hanzo close until their foreheads are pressed together. 

“Hanzo, fuck,” he says, then closes the inch of space between them to bring their mouths together. He doesn’t know if he’s really gotten sick, doesn’t know if he tastes foul. Hanzo doesn’t recoil, at any rate, pressing into Jesse and making a noise in his throat like he’s hurt. “Saw you die, darlin’, saw you… god, fuck this place. We need to get out of here.” 

Hanzo nods, looking down at his bow like he’s terrified of it somehow.

“We can’t go up. The stairs, they’re— they’re wrong. There’s no way through.” 

Jesse’s face twists into a scowl, and he glances down at his feet.

“Signal was coming from the bottom floor, right?” Whatever that means, in a place like this. Hanzo nods, and Jesse squares his shoulders. “Guess we’re going down, then.”

They go down, and it’s easy, now. There are two flights of stairs, and then they end, opening up into a large room with low ceilings and broken storage crates littering the floor. MREs, and water, and medicine. Winter gear, batteries, biotics. Hanzo and Jesse creep inside, glancing around the place.

There’s a trail of blood leading from the stairs into the corner. Jesse can see it no matter which eye is open. He slips closer; scattered around the cot are empty rations, used biotic needles, drained water bottles. 

On top of the cot, desiccated like it’s been there for months at least, is Gabriel. What’s left of Gabriel, rotten flesh stretched over ragged bones, everything soaked in old blood. His eyes are open, staring at nothing.

He’s been dead a long time. 

Jesse pulls in a breath, lets it out fast. Shudders all over, like the cold hasn’t been gnawing at him the whole time. Like he’s only just noticed it. Thinking Gabriel was dead and seeing it with his own eyes are as different as night and day. Jesse covers his mouth. Lets out a ragged little huff. The last time he’d seen Gabriel,  _ really  _ seen Gabriel, he’d told Jesse to leave.

_ Fuck off, then. What are you waiting for? An honorable discharge? _

Jesse had left long before that, really, miles away with only his body going through the motions. It hurt, when he left.

It still hurt, years later on the other side of the world, Gabriel falling to pieces in front of him. 

It wasn’t all that different; then.

Now.

Gabriel ended up here, somehow, all alone and wounded enough that no amount of biotic fields or syringes or pills would put him back together again.

“Jesse,” Hanzo says, laying a hand on Jesse’s shoulder.

_ “Jesse,”  _ Gabriel says, though his body is still and silent.

It rolls through the room in a cloud of black smoke, curling around them both like a caress. Jesse can feel it pressing against them, and not just the smoke. The very air itself is heavy, dust falling from the ceiling as the ground shakes. It feels like there are explosions somewhere far below him.

It feels like the building is going to come down on their heads.

“Gabriel,” Jesse says, and there is laughter, smoke twisting over his skin all cold and clinging.

_ “Jesse.” _

It comes again, slow and sickeningly sweet.

“What’d you bring us here for, Gabriel? I’m… I’m fucking sorry, okay? I’m sorry you were here alone, and I couldn’t help you, but there ain’t nothing we can do for you now.”

_ “There is something you can do for me. One last thing. You owe me, Jesse.” _

_ I don’t owe you shit,  _ Jesse thinks, but bites down on the words. Plaster rains down in chunks, crashing to the floor. Everything shakes harder, enough that Jesse feels unsteady on his feet. The smoke is thickening, coiling heavy around them. It’s Gabriel, Jesse realizes.

What is left of Gabriel.

“What do you want from me, Gabe?”

Jesse’s nose is bleeding. His eye, both ears. His mouth tastes like blood, and it’s dripping into his clothes, oozing from his fingernails. There’s the smell of ozone in the air, and the groaning of metal.

_ “Everything,”  _ Gabriel says, and then the smoke is going tighter around Jesse, pouring into his mouth, pushing at his skin.

Jesse’s head snaps back, blood flowing more freely from his face, hands shaking as he claws at his throat. It’s like being in a swarm of wasps, the buzzing loud in his ears, smoke stinging everywhere Gabriel touches him. He chokes out a ragged sound, muscles shaking. It’s not just his body.

Gabriel is pressing into his thoughts, into his memories. It’s like he’s being skinned alive, and smoke is twisting into his muscles, and flowing through his blood.

Everything, Jesse thinks.

Gabriel is trying to take everything.

Trying to take over Jesse’s body. Trying to control him like a puppet; Jesse thinks of Blackwatch. It isn’t that different; then.

Now.

Jesse is losing himself.

Jesse is lost.

Then there is a flash of blue beside him, Hanzo standing a few feet back with his bow drawn. There’s terror in his eyes, something animal and ancient. The words come, as they always do, furious and crackling through with lightning.

Hanzo’s dragons come, and swallow Jesse whole, blue light swirling around him. They overtake him, and there is no room for black smoke or Gabriel’s voice. 

No room for other spirits when he is being overtaken by dragons. Gabriel scatters like sand blown away in the wind, and Jesse closes his eyes, and falls to his knees. The dragons are roaring. The dragons are grieving.

It feels like they’re burning him, but there’s no malevolence in the sensation. There is… something mournful, something lonely.

Something apologetic, and Jesse feels alive like he’s never been, the whole world crackling like a storm has come calling even so far underground. 

When everything clears there is no sign of Gabriel’s smoke. The ground isn’t shaking. There is no storm, no wind, no voice in his head. Jesse opens his eyes, and there is no sign of any of the destruction that had been wrought. No broken plaster, no flickering lights, no rusted metal. Gabriel’s body is in the corner, but there is nothing else of him. Chased away by Hanzo’s dragons, Jesse supposes. It feels too good to be true, but he isn’t going to complain.

Hanzo is on his hands and knees, breathing hard. His jaw trembles. He’s bleeding from his mouth, and shaking.

Hanzo is shaking all over.

“Hanzo,” Jesse says, and crawls over to him, pulling Hanzo into his arms. Hanzo goes easily, but his hands are still quaking so hard Jesse wonders for a moment if he’s seizing. It eases back slowly, though not entirely.

He kisses his temple, mouth leaving a gory imprint behind, and holds Hanzo tight. When they’ve both calmed down a little Jesse kisses him again, this time on the cheek, and nods.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here. We need to check on the others.”

Jesse takes a moment to collect Gabriel’s dog tags, trying and failing not to look at him. Not to see the pile of meat and bones he’d left behind.

Not to think about how they just banished whatever was left of Gabriel somewhere far away.

There are only two flights of stairs between each floor, pristine metal with only the faintest hints of rust. At the top of the stairs is a closed metal door that hadn’t been closed on the way down, but it opens easily under Jesse’s hand.

Opens to the control room, where the others are all gathered around the monitors. There is no blood, no sign of a struggle. Mei is tapping at one of the holos. Ana is in the corner frowning. Jesse and Hanzo share a look, relief and disbelief warring within them. None of it had been real.

None of it, except that he and Hanzo were still streaked with gore and worse for wear. They all glanced up in unison, shock evident on their faces. Mei moves first, stumbling towards them with her hands waving through the air.

“What HAPPENED? The door locked behind you and we couldn’t get any messages through. We cleared everything up here, but then thought we heard gunfire. Hana was about to go get some ordinance from the transport and try and blow the door.” 

There’s a moment of silence. Jesse doesn’t know what to say.

Ana breaks it for him, voice steely and without inflection.

“Did you find Jack?” 

Jesse shakes his head and reaches into his pocket, wordlessly holding out Gabriel’s tags.

“Jack isn’t here. Wasn’t never here, message was a ploy. Found someone else though. Or… what’s left of him.” 

Hanzo is talking in low tones with Mei, Hana, and Lúcio as Ana crosses the room and takes Gabriel’s tags, lifting them up to her face. She wipes away some of the dust. Doesn’t close her eyes.

“Where is he?” There’s no emotion in the words. She was always good at that.

“Third sublevel down. We’ll take him with us, yeah? Get him buried. For real, this time.”

Ana doesn’t nod. Doesn’t say a word.

She disappears down the stairs. Jesse feels a moment of panic, but it passes quickly; whatever had been going on here, it was over now.

“Mei, Lúcio, you wanna go get the orca going for us? Hana, maybe bring us a stretcher and a… a body bag, if you would.”

They all nodded and headed for the door, leaving Hanzo and Jesse behind. The base is eerily quiet with just the two of them. 

It would have been so lonely. Coming here as some kind of last ditch escape attempt. Bleeding out in the basement with no hope of rescue. All alone at the top of the world and no one even knew he was here.

Hanzo is looking at the floor, bow clenched tight in his fist. He weaves in place and drops to his knees, and Jesse frowns, taking a step towards him.

“Hanzo?”

Jesse reaches out to touch him. His sleeve rides up, revealing the edge of his wrist.

Revealing a swirl of blue that’s familiar, if out of context. Jesse’s breath catches, and he tugs his sleeve higher, staring. It’s Hanzo’s tattoo.

It’s Hanzo’s tattoo on his arm. Jesse wrenches his jacket off in spite of the cold, along with all his layers, until he’s in nothing but a long sleeved t-shirt. He pulls the sleeve up further, yanks his collar down. Lightning, and storm clouds, and dragons. Jesse feels full suddenly, like there is electricity in his teeth and he might split apart at the seams

“Hanzo,” he says again, voice wavering.

Hanzo looks up at him with black eyes, smile dark and euphoric on his face. The expression is so foreign it sends a chill down Jesse’s spine.

When he speaks it’s Hanzo’s voice, but rougher, full of gravel. The way Reaper sounds like Gabriel, and yet does not.

“Not Hanzo,” he says, blood still trickling from the corner of his mouth, pink between his teeth. “Not just Hanzo, anyway. Can see all his thoughts though. Memories. God, it’s a wreck in here. What a fucking disaster.”

“Gabriel,” Jesse says, breathless. It’s impossible, but Jesse’s ideas about that have shifted rapidly in the past few hours. “What the fuck are you doing, Gabriel?” Hanzo— Gabriel smiles wider, wiping the blood from his face with the knuckles of one hand.

“Hitching a ride to see Jackie,” he says, holding his arms out appraisingly. “Tried to bring Talon here, first. It worked but they weren’t strong enough to hold me. Wanted you— know that deadeye of yours has always been a little on the spooky side. Figured you’d be strong enough, but then you brought fratricide over here along. He’s been carrying two spirits around all his life. Seems like plenty of room for me.” Gabriel lays his palms on Hanzo’s thighs, slides them slowly higher. “Yeah, this’ll do.”

Jesse’s mouth is open, but he isn’t sure what he wants to say. There’s a surreal feeling that swirls through him. The same stomach-dropping nausea of a sudden death, or a mission gone south. Where it seems like you could reach out and pull things back, but you can’t. Dizzy unreality, dragging on for a moment too long.

Then Hanzo’s— Gabriel’s expression twists into a scowl, and he shudders all over and falls forward, catching himself on his palms. When Hanzo sits up again he’s panting, sweat on his face and cheeks flushed.

His eyes are grey, again, no trace of the blackness that had been there. He blinks up at Jesse, then spits blood onto the floor.

“Not carrying two spirits.  _ Containing  _ two spirits. Mostly.” Jesse has a lot of questions, but they dry up in his mouth when Hanzo shucks his jacket and pulls up his sleeve.

His tattoo is red now. Vivid, brilliant red. The storm clouds have shifted into coiling smoke, the lightning bursts of flame. Instead of dragons there are skeletons twisting over his skin, but with too many bones in all the wrong places and Jesse finds he doesn’t like looking at them.

Hanzo tugs his sleeve back down into place, closing his eyes tightly. When he opens them again he looks at Jesse’s arm. At his dragons, in Jesse’s skin.

“Don’t,” he says, then the words stick in his throat. He swallows with a clicking sound and tries again. “Don’t try to summon them yet. I need to— to show you how, or— you’ll hurt yourself.”

Hanzo had unleashed his dragons at Jesse to keep Gabriel from possessing him, and left himself open instead.

Jesse hears Ana coming up the stairs and pulls his sleeve down in a rush, jerking Hanzo’s into place as well. Ana doesn’t need to see.

No one needs to see. Not yet anyway.

“We’ll handle it,” Jesse says, earnest and intense as he holds Hanzo’s eyes. Hanzo swallows again, and nods.

They don’t have a choice.

They climb into the orca and leave Belukha behind, the lights on the outside of the facility flickering off into darkness just as they slide out of sight. They sit next to one another in the transport. Jesse tangles their fingers together, holds Hanzo’s hand. Hanzo’s tattoo is as cold as ice.

Jesse doesn’t pull away.


End file.
